Presntation notes, to condence to a list

Presentation notes



When I first started generating ideas they were mostly technology based. It was as if I was as if I was trying to find the solution to a concept before I have even grasps a concept. This had set be behind a bit but I was able to pinpoint a possible concept for ideas out of the burst shot idea. In this idea I wanted to use burst shooting on a camera to explore how taking out frame of a made up video would affect how the viewer perceives it as a memory. I was told to broaden my horizons so I script that idea all together and had a blank canvas for ideas which would be based around memory.

From here I began to research heavily into the science behind what makes memory work. I looked into the autonomy of the brain, how each part had a different job. I discovered the models of memory, sensory memory an impulse memory which happens automatically and stays with us for a very short amount of time, the short term memory which is a place where current information is stored for things that are happening now, this information is then sent to the long term memory if it is needed to be recalled at a later date. For example if someone tells you a telephone number this would be held in the short-term memory. Repetition or revision of the number will aid its success in being transferred into the long-term memory. We must also remember that long term memory also decays and without revision information may be lost.

My research also looked into how emotions affect memory and I discovered that at heightened levels of emotion we are more likely to lock event into out memory at the expense of events that might have happened hours or minutes before. As I delved deeper into my research I started to become aware of super memory, a way of remembering huge amounts of information to be recalled at anytime. This is commonly known as photographic memory. I soon became aware of the opposite end of this where people would forget things, in the most extreme case a British man could only remember that last 20 seconds. I learnt of his distress, this feeling of waking up all the time. His notebooks constant scribbles of past evens, as he believes he had just awoken the previous events were disregarded and he scribbled them out.

From here I decided to create a series of image which looked at ways I could simple represent memory. These resulted in negative film, digital SD and Polaroid’s. This is where the title and idea came from my project, The Polaroid was an icon on being able to capture and see an image almost instantly. This is obviously void now due to digital cameras but when this Polaroid was 'in fashion' it was a big thing, and has become a cult icon.

At first I was interested in the sensory memory and its difference in visual and audio times before they decayed. There was a relationship between the two and I thought as a concept before even looking into technologies this was where I was going to take the project.
(*show storyboard one*)
At this time I began to open the project back up after consisting it down into just research. I produced a small series of images in which audio would be illustrated above. I named this audio lines. The image contained a consist subject of the sky, this was partly to show an idea of repetition something previously explore in the research then information is converted into the long term memory, as repetition helps this. Essentially audio is recorded for 4 seconds (the maximum time for sound to decay in the sensory memory) this is then spanned across the photograph or illustration. I considered do this part in processing as I wanted to apply some kind of aesthetic on the waveform, rather than just the waveforms we know.

I also created some work using typeface as a aid of showing a fact that we can only remember 7 blocks of information before our memory is exhausted (short term memory)

At this point I began to watch films about memory such as.

Copy Shop
Fight Club
Gattaca
La Jetee
Minority Report
The Island
Unknown White Male
50 First Dates
Eternal Sunshine


While watching these I found a link with identity and memory. This interested me greatly as I began to understand that we are who we are based on our experience of the past drawn from out memory. Without out memory who are we? The channel four documentary "Unknown White Male" was an inspiration at this point. It outlined some of the questions I had been asking myself when reviewing such films as Gattaca. The documentary explored how a man had to rebuild his life after wakening up on a subway train with no memories to recall on a personal level. The film explained how memory had 3 different types and that the part which stores memories on a personal memory had been damaged.

At this point my project took a big turn, and I decided I would like to keep exploring this idea of memory failure rather than to explore the relationships between audio and visual in sensory memory. Being inspired again by the film momento I began looking into memory disorders and illnesses. Amnesia refers to any memory problem. I explored different types of amnesia in my research. I then came across another documentary about a man called Clive wearing who suffered from multiple types of amnesia. He was only able to remember in 20 second blocks. I then ready parts of his wife’s book to try to understand more about the condition but it was really just what was in the documentary but it was form here eyes so it explained how she lives with a man who can only remember 20 seconds.

It was at this point I decided I wanted to explore ways of visually showing ideas of memory loss. I started to look at short-term memory and long-term memory as two separate things, and I already knew that memory loss was the cause of these two things not working together. To explain Clive Wearings problem he was unable to retrieve information from his long term memory, every so often though he would be able to recall events, but he would say them without realizing, this gave some evidence that memory was being sent from the short term memory into the long term memory but that there was a communication problem when the long term was needed to be recalled

I began by filming some lofi videos and quickly found a link between image compression and memory. I had an idea that I would record different qualities of video and use these to show were memory was being lost. I comprised a route that I would take to record certain events which might exploit the limitations of lofi video to create a larger contrast against HD video. Essentially my idea was that the movie be shot in HD and then lofi video edited as overlays to show the effects of compression, mimicking the loss of memory about a certain subject in the scene.
(*show route story board*)

It was here that I began to explore compression in video, as I began to compress video I noticed artifacts appear which then lead me onto wanted to look into the glitch. Having previously read iImans dissertation when writing my own dissertation I already had a slight interest into the style. I first began glitching video by manipulating key frames, this was tried on a number of video's but I then started to manipulate images.
(*show aesthetics storyboard*)

(*show website experiments*)

I found a link in how I was creating some of the glitched, I was almost mimicking human memory, in the way that the data is passed from one place to the other but cannot be ready correctly. I looked back at the camera as being the eye of the memory, so when an image is recorded that is as marshal McLuhan said, just an extension of our own human eye. The data when stored on the computer is then in the "short term memory" and I then take the data and open it in defiant environments on the computer. This is my interpretation of the memories journey at tiring to be stored in the long term memory. The data is corrupted, and the result is the effect of amnesia onto the image.

I decided not to shoot video due to a time constrain, but another reason for using photography is that it works much like memory, in terms of it being described as block, draws, compartments. Each photograph would be a 'block'

(*show process board*)
(*show concept board*)

Deciding that I wanted to use photography I wanted to choose a style which aided the project, so I wanted to use a style which reflected back on my previous idea of sensory memory. The idea of capturing small pockets of time in which I did not affect shooting. I used a style of documentary photography called street photography, which is less about capturing important events and more about capturing everyday life. This mean I had to roam the street with my camera looking for these movements. Talk about who inspires me
(*show street photography on blog*)

I found a link with an artist saying that glitch art was like a digital way to photograph, not it a literal since but in that way that you wait around ready, waiting for the moments to happen in the environment, this of cause meaning the computer environment and not the real world.

Once I had selected the image they were then forced to glitch to show my concept. This was done 100's and on anew occasions 1000 times to find an image which would have an aesthetic to show this. For example I looked for lost or moved blocks of pixel data which would cover a characters face or a part of the image I thought neccisery. I then wanted a way of presenting these images. The Polaroid, going right back to the start of the project when I took some photos of what I thought showed memory was a Polaroid. This would close the image off nicely, showing its change in coming off the computer (short term memory) and into the Long Term Memory world.

The glitch changed once the aesthetics of the Polaroid’s had its way. They seemed to become more human in a way, the edges of the pixel blocks burred and some colours smudged. I liked this as it took away some of the idea of glitch being what I see as a digital thing.

(*show videos*)
Explain about being experiments; show the gradual degrationation of the data

(*show 3 min video*)
Exhibition video

(*show final piece*)
*as they look*

explain that I chose the images due to having a relationship with the other shots sometimes, example *point at total glitch* and saying this contests with the almost photographic *old lady*. Then explain why some never got into the chosen 12. Due to blurred, badly composed, other peoples photography (before I managed to take my own)



What would you do to the project, personal analyze.

There is no narrative so adding narrative to the create a story, give an example of a breakdown of communication in the story shown through the Polaroid’s, start being normal then changing the memory to glitch.